Azerbaijanis who fled a separatist region decades ago ache to return, but it could be a long wait

BAKU – As a younger guy beginning out as a dentist, Nazim Valiyev was once compelled to flee his house as ethnic violence roiled a separatist region within Azerbaijan. More than 3 decades later, together with his clinical profession over after a stroke, the 60-year-old hopes he can go back there, now that it is again underneath Azerbaijani keep an eye on.

It could nonetheless be years, on the other hand, prior to he realizes his dream.

Valiyev is without doubt one of the estimated 700,000 Azerbaijanis who fled or had been compelled out of the region they name Karabakh amid violence that flared starting in 1988 after which grew into an outright conflict.

That battle led to 1994, with the territory underneath the keep an eye on of ethnic Armenian forces supported by way of their neighboring nation. A next conflict in 2020 returned keep an eye on of a lot of the world to Azerbaijan, and a lightning offensive closing month compelled the Armenian separatists to relinquish the remainder of the region identified somewhere else as Nagorno-Karabakh.

Within days of the capitulation, ethnic Armenians streamed out of the region, leaving it just about empty. A United Nations project that visited in early October mentioned there would possibly be not more than 1,000 other people left within the region whose inhabitants was once an estimated 120,000 a month ago.

The blinding pace of occasions raised spirits amongst the ones who had fled so long ago and longed to go back to its mountains and thick forests.

“I often saw in my dreams how my neighbors and I, as before, were walking in the forest and picking flowers,” Bahar Aliguleyeva mentioned of her youth reminiscences within the Karabakh capital town of Khankendi, which was once referred to as Stepanakert by way of Armenians.

When she heard that Azerbaijan had regained keep an eye on of the town she left in 1988 at age 16, “I somehow didn’t even believe it. It’s as if I found myself somewhere between the past and reality, but there is a path to happiness,” she instructed The Associated Press in Baku, the Azerbaijan capital.

Valiyev, the previous dentist, mentioned he thinks about returning on a daily basis, “but I understand that this will not be a quick process.”

In 2022, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev established a program called “The Great Return to Azerbaijan’s Liberated Territories” to bring back long-displaced people. It envisions improvements in infrastructure, construction of residences, and laborious, slow-moving efforts to clear the region of mines.

Azerbaijan’s budget for this year allocates about $3.1 billion for reconstruction projects in the region.

So far, only about 2,000 people have returned, but the government aims for 10,000 by the end of the year, according to Fuad Huseynov of the State Committee for Affairs of Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons.

He told AP that the government plans to return 150,000 people by 2027.

“Mines are a huge obstacle, a huge problem. The territories that were under Armenian occupation for 30 years were not only virtually completely razed to the ground, but also mined with mines and other unexploded military ammunition,” he said.

Since the 2020 war, at least 65 people have been killed by mines and another 267 injured in the territories once held by Armenians, according to Azerbaijan’s Mine Action Agency.

If Aliguleyeva and Valiyev and other displaced residents are ever able to return, what they may find could be wrenching. Aliguleyeva is uncertain whether her childhood home is still intact.

Although she was able to contact a former neighbor through social media, “when I asked her to send a photo of the house, she only sent a photo of the courtyard wall.”

Valiyev mentioned his circle of relatives place of dwelling was once burned down in 1988, even if the separate construction the place he saved his dental apparatus survived. He is keen to return nevertheless.

“My 5-year-old granddaughter loves it when I tell her about my childhood in Karabakh, and she says that she also wants to grow up there. The past must never be repeated,” he mentioned. “We and the Armenians must start a new life, no matter how difficult it may be. Enmity cannot continue forever, it must remain in the past.”

Overcoming that enmity likely is a more difficult process than rebuilding war-ruined buildings. Although both Valiyev and Aliguliyeva spoke warmly of getting along with their Armenian neighbors when they lived in Khankendi, they also told of the terror they felt when ethnic violence drove them away.

Azerbaijan has repeatedly promised that the rights of ethnic Armenians who want to stay in the region will be respected.

But “such assertions are difficult to accept at face value after the months of severe hardships, decades of conflict, impunity for alleged crimes, in particular during hostilities, and the Azerbaijani government’s overall deteriorating human rights record,” the Human Rights Watch organization said.

___

Jim Heintz in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed.